ON LANGUAGE

ON LANGUAGE; Stud Muffin's Buzz-Kill

By William Safire

Published: May 23, 1993

A muffin is an affectionate name for a young woman -- "Not now, muffin" -- usually taken as a put-down by the daughters of what a previous generation called cookies. In a vengeance expressed in campus slang, we now have stud muffin, which means "attractive young man." (The stud is rooted in the term for a male horse selected for breeding.) A stud muffin who works out, I am informed by Charles D. Poe of Houston, can transform himself into a diesel.

Welcome to this year's world of fresh campus slang, drawing on responses to an invitation in this space that went, "If your prof is crunchy, don't feel schwag; send your local lexicon to Safire's Buzz-kill." Part of the teaser was a definition of hookup as "a person with whom one is romantically involved," and wizard as "exceptionally sick."

From Cornell University comes this refreshing dash of cold water: "Reading your article felt as if I were listening to a tone-deaf person sing," writes Anna Day of Ithaca, N.Y. "Hookup does not stand for romantic involvement. It is used primarily as a verb, and to hook up is to 'get some,' or 'make out.' Previous hookups can be a major source of embarrassment, since the word implies a certain amount of anonymity and a carnality one may not wish to admit to the next morning."

That's how we lexies learn; I had thought it was mere friendin'. "Being crunchy is the same as being granola," Ms. Day, a sophomore, goes on. "It's out-of-control (or o.o.c.) p.c., the type that support hunchback [ sic ] whales and don't shave their body hair. It's definitely pejorative and comes from the habit of the granola people of eating trail mix in otherwise civilized surroundings."

We're going too fast. Granola is an Americanism from the 1870's for a breakfast-food mixture of rolled oats, sesame seeds, wheat germ, nuts, dried fruit, brown sugar and, in some post-bellum cases, sawdust sweepings and whatever else was lying around the kitchen floor. When chewed, it crunches; when chewed by vegetarians, it does not angry up the blood. Webster's New World Diction ary, from Simon & Schuster, helpfully speculates that the word, originally a trademark, was built from the Latin granum, "grain," plus the Italian diminutive suffix -ola.

Out of control is psychological jargon, the reverse of the 1930's phrase under control, and is the title of Zbigniew Brzezinski's latest book on global turmoil (Zbig always uses the latest teen-age slang). The letters p.c., which used to stand for "personal computer" back in the old 286 days, now of course initialize "politically correct," rooted in Maoist thinking. Headline writers cramped for space will welcome o.o.c.p.c. to describe such phrases as temporally impaired for "late."

Now to buzz-kill. Let us not confuse this with the buzz, meaning "the talk going around"; that onomatopoeic sense, which imitated the sound of a bee, started out meaning "confused and mingled sound," and gained a gossipy sense in Shakespeare's "King Lear": "On everie dream,/Each buz, each fancie"; it was picked up by William Cobbett, the English polemicist and vituperator, who wrote in his 1825 "Rural Rides" that "A sort of buz got about." Now it is the title of a page in Variety that sweeps together the latest show-biz chatter, and the first part of buzzword, a new term for "jargon" or "vogue word."

The other buzz is rooted in the sound some people think they hear in their head when slightly looped or mildly stoned -- short of smashed by booze or zonked on drugs at a rage, or party. "A buzz-kill is something that kills a buzz," Ms. Day notes, "such as having cops break up a party or losing a fake ID. It's generally said to empathize with someone. 'What a buzz-kill' would be an appropriate interjection when a friend is telling you about some sobering misfortune." (The term may be related to the earlier kill-joy.)

From Berkeley, Calif., comes this contribution from John J. Reilly, a recent Stanford graduate: "Nectar, an intensification of the locution sweet, which is most common in surfing culture, describing the esthetic perfection of a subject, usually waves or babes." (A sweet spot on a baseball bat is where the batter hopes it will meet the ball.)

From David Sklar of Wynnewood, Pa., a high-school student: scudi, n., "money," and blunt, v.i. (not the noun blunt, which means "a cigar laced with marijuana"); the verb denotes "to perform tasks that are drudgery," as in "The reason I put up with blunting at McD's is for the scudi."

From Jack Chambers, a professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto, who regularly surveys his students for his "Slang Bag" compilation:

Quad, "a fool," perhaps a clipping of quadrilateral, an updating of the 1960's square.

To be a friend of Dorothy, "to be homosexual," from the character played by Judy Garland in "The Wizard of Oz," now a gay cult film. (This term has been used in England for several years.)

Level, "acceptable, approved." A substitute for cool, which used to mean "excellent," often expressed as simply ex. Gloria Peters, class of '93, finds a newer sense for cool: "I hear you and will take appropriate action." Her citation: On the television show "Roseanne," the leading lady and her husband renew their vows. Instead of answering, "I will," Roseanne responds, "Cool."

Moneypuker, a vivid word picture for "automatic teller machine," unlikely to be taken up in banking advertising.

Professor Chambers adds a nice touch with this quotation from Walt Whitman: "Such is Slang . . . an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald literalism, and express itself illimitably."

But some slanguists are protective about their subject. "I hate to see teen-age argot forcibly injected into mainstream language," observes Ms. Day from high above Cayuga's waters. "As soon as it settles into a patois to be translated, you may be sure that the code will change. What is left is wannabe faddish word parroters, mid-life crises people wandering about mumbling, 'Totally rad.' (Rad is dated. Very dated.) Get a clue, as we say up here."

Get a clue is an offshoot of Get a life!, the conservative imperative exhaustively discussed in last week's language column. Both phrases were preceded by the turn-of-the-century shout Get a horse!, which is associated with stud and led finally to stud muffin.